1. Technical Field
The disclosure relates in general to an intervertebral cage, an implanting apparatus and an operating method thereof, and more particularly to an intervertebral cage used for being implanted into a location between adjacent vertebral bodies, an implanting apparatus used for implanting the intervertebral cage and an operating method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
The main functions of the spine are for supporting and protecting important nerve tissues. The spine includes a number of vertebral bodies and intervertebral discs. Each intervertebral disc is located between two top-down vertebral bodies to relieve stress by absorbing the pressure generated from vertebral bodies. The intervertebral discs further serve as pivots for enabling the human body to rotate or bend, and are thus crucial to the human body. However, the intervertebral discs having been pressed by local stresses over a long period of time tend to degenerate or even become herniated so as to suppress the nerves. Thus, degenerated or herniated intervertebral discs would cause acute pain and such pain is hard to relieve.
One of the most commonly used therapies is to remove the intervertebral disc that suppresses the nerve or the spinal cord through a surgical operation. In general, the clinical surgeon would first perform excision on the intervertebral disc. Then, the patient's autologous bone is implanted into a hole formed following the excision of the intervertebral disc. Thus, two top-down vertebral bodies and the patient's implanted autologous bone can be fused to restore the stability of the spine. However, if the original spine is already unstable, too many (more than two) intervertebral discs are excised, or the amount of bone implantation is too large, then an intervertebral cage (also known as spinal interbody fusion cage) is implanted into a location between the vertebral bodies to assure the success of bone fusion and avoid the implanted autologous bone being broken or exfoliated due to overload.
Despite minimally invasive surgery has become popular in the field of clinical orthopedics, orthopedics surgical instruments such as intervertebral cages still need certain sizes and shapes to assure the appropriate stability, so that the created wound is at least 5 cm. Also, in terms of uniform distribution of stress, the shapes of ordinary intervertebral cages do not match with the shapes of the patient's vertebral bodies, so the stress received by the intervertebral cage is not uniformly distributed. Provided that the intervertebral cage whose shape is close to that of the vertebral body is available, such type of the intervertebral cage is normally too large. Thus, nerves or great vessels are hard to be bypassed, and injuries are very likely to be resulted. Thus, how to provide an intervertebral cage which is conformed to the requirements of the minimally invasive surgery and capable of resolving the above mentioned disadvantages has become an imminent task for the industries.